Facebook Is Trying To Make Itself Relevant in The “Story” Game With New Features

Facebook Stories is behind on the story sharing game. Both Instagram and Snapchat have it covered and it doesn’t seem like Facebook is going to change that anytime soon. But like that annoying person who isn’t used to getting rejected and just doesn’t take a hint when you clearly aren’t interested, Facebook is going to keep trying. Because Facebook always gets what it wants.

Facebook Stories is adding two new features to it’s in-app camera, as reported by TechCrunch. The first will be an AR doodling feature, and the second will be Instagram’s looping Boomerangs (if you didn’t know, Facebook owns Instagram so that makes it okay).

Facebook calls the AR doodling “3D drawing”—it will let users draw in the real world on real world images. You can draw shapes and words that will, in-camera, stay in place and be viewable as you move around the object. Yes, this sounds something similar to the drawing tools from Snapchat but this takes it to the next level. Before you go hating, the feature actually looks kind of cool.

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Facebook told TechCrunch that the technology can understand the dynamics of the real world, including understanding the corners and objects in a room.

The other newest addition is the Boomerang feature that you can find on Instagram. Last year, Facebook added looping GIFs, which is something similar. But the GIFs would play through and then repeat, while Boomerang loops go back and forth (if you don’t know what it is by name, it’s that feature that every girl uses on her story when she’s drinking with her friends that makes it look like they are cheersing each other over and over). Whether this feature will completely replace the looping GIFs is yet to be known.

Yes, the AR feature is pretty cool. But is it cool enough to make Facebook Stories worth more than a visit or two?

Uh….

Hey, that’s for you to decide.

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